Betting smart speakers, giants in the next game?

The battle for smart speakers is in fact the battle for the giants' AI, and the struggle for smart home entry is just a more ambitious goal.

In 2017, except for sharing bicycles, another hot area is none other than smart speakers. It is worth noting that in the rush of smart speakers, most of the competitors are platform giants. There are Amazons abroad, Google, and Ali. Baidu and so on.

From the perspective of product form and scene, smart speakers are like the upgraded version of the Bluetooth speaker of the year, but they can not help asking questions, giants have laid out, including Baidu and Ali, which rarely involve the hardware business, also entered the game. Where is the logic behind the road?

From a product function point of view, compared to traditional speakers, this round of smart speaker selling points mainly focused on voice human-computer interaction and content services, such as smart system-based music, audio books, and even e-commerce online shopping, and even trying to be smart The home control center connects household products, but conversely, whether it is music, audiobooks, local services, or online shopping, these forced migration scenarios and services are mostly sloppy services, and the concept of smart home entrance is also It seems that the giants have rationalized the layout of the smart speakers, but is the real logic really just here?

Will the smart home entrance take the old road of smart routing?

For now, why the giants are arguing for the layout of smart speakers, the most reasonable answer seems to be to seize the entrance of smart homes, but when looking at the Internet and the Internet of Things, those who seem to have entry attributes The final product is often regarded as a non-essential product.

After the outbreak of smart phones, the dispute over the mobile Internet portal has been fought for several years. There have been browser disputes and news client disputes. The unexpected result was the birth of Super App WeChat and Alipay. The initially determined mobile Internet market gradually faded out of people's view on the issue of entry.

After the mobile Internet, the concept of the Internet of Things became popular. Most of the people thought that the second half of the Internet must be the Internet of Things (IoT), so the entry dispute is inevitable. Since 2015, smart routers have become giants like today’s smart speakers. The “smart home portal” that the entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurs rushed to layout was able to implement Internet acceleration, video ad filtering, smart speed limit, and only through a router without any settings on the computer and mobile phone. Remote control of the mobile phone, even "scientific access to the Internet," and even the hardware properties, gave the router an iPhone tag.

At that time, Wang Chuyun, the founder of “Pole Route”, defined it as the “home data transmission/exchange center”. Huang Dong of Husk Electronics defined it as the “family information center.” In the description of the scene, it was painted out. The beautiful scenes of the future world, such as the ability to automatically push TV dramas, do not need buffering, look at what is on the mobile phone, transmit to the router to return home TV automatically continue broadcasting, routers as hardware support for intelligent platforms and third-party intelligent application plug-ins as software systems Supported smart WiFi system. The idea of ​​sharing the same goal now seems to have just become a lied to oneself and others have not believed in a copy of what they believed. However, such a beautiful future disappeared after six months.

Two years after the smart home entrance was struck, smart speakers re-embed the entrance task. This time they have new equipment, namely voice human-computer interaction, and the voice interactive technology has also shown perfection in the smart home scene. The fit is precisely the most critical technology for the smart home entrance. However, outside the technology, most viewpoints give it the attributes of the traffic entrance. The concept of the traffic entrance itself is a pseudo concept, because all of the entry carriers will eventually Become a huge traffic entrance.

In simple terms, voice human-computer interaction is the entry condition for smart homes and even smart home entrances, and the traffic entrance is an attribute that will only be generated outside the entrance. Currently, smart speakers only have the voice interaction of the smart home entrance. An access requirement, but for the Internet of Things, there is no industry standard yet. There are still huge variables in the future. With regard to smart home entrance, what kind of carrier is the future? Virtual or physical is also full of variables. It is just a carrier's attempt. After all, in addition to voice human-machine interaction, we have not yet seen more change points in other scenarios. It is even conceivable that future smart homes may not require such an entrance. Implementing voice interaction is a property of each hardware product, such as opening the door to the refrigerator and booting to the TV.

In contrast to the Internet of Things industry? It is still in the initial stage of development. Each home appliance brand has its own separatist side and each has its own standard. At the same time, it is very difficult to ensure that all households have the same brand. Multi-standard agreements directly lead to the fragmentation of smart homes. Phenomenon is also becoming more and more serious. The interconnection between hardware cannot be realized, but it makes the intelligent control center more and more cumbersome. From this point of view alone, smart speakers are far from the entrance, and after the actual standards are formed, the product form has already undergone a huge iteration.

The tuyere has been around every year, but most of this round began as runners.

Hundred Regiments Offensive, Vertical E-Commerce, Smartphones, Big Data, Taxi, P2P, O2O, VR/AR, Live Streaming, Shared Bicycles, Blockchain, The Uninterrupted Transition of Capital of Entrepreneur Followers over the Past Years The track, catching the air, and the influx of hot money have created a large number of large-scale speculators. In these typical capital outlets, whether it is speculation or pragmatism, there are great luck marks behind the winners, but they are smart. The field of speakers is obviously a lot different.

Since Amazon released Echo products in 2014, the small players who established this market began to accompany the fate of running. From the comparison of major players, including Amazon, Google, Baidu and Ali have a lot in common, first of all platform-based companies, followed by these players most of the main business focused on the line, especially in the hardware business Less involved, in addition to Amazon's book business support, Google's development across the board, Ali and Baidu are almost blank on the hardware level, in addition to platform-based and online-based, these three have a common feature That is, all three are important players in the field of cloud computing.

Of course, such comparison results are not accidental, but they hold up the inevitable option of the smart speaker market. The logic behind this will be further analyzed in the third section. The reason why the small players in this field can't escape the fate of the runners from the beginning, besides the three common points mentioned above, there are giants quickly cut into the locked up competition in this field, and The giant effect has also been shown in market cultivation and rapid spread.

According to the data, by the end of this year, the global smart speaker market sales will be close to even 30 million units, which is more than five times year-on-year sales growth. It is worth pondering that this market is dominated by Internet giants such as Amazon, Google and Alibaba. It is expected to account for more than 90% of market share this year.

Such as the Himalayas Xiaoya, Lenovo, cool dog, go out to ask, Jingdong and HKUST's infighting is difficult to avoid becoming a runner, first of all from the point of view of product form, the current view can only be rushed to sell smart speaker, cultivate the market The runners, because they only caught up with the speed of product production, but far behind the giants in the strategic logic, or for these small players, such a product line does not seem necessary, because after all, Is a money-making business, such as Ma Yun and Amazon can instantly in the promotional section into hundreds of millions of marketing fees, the more critical is that if it is just a simple tool hardware, or even just a high-end toy, Huaqiang North is undoubtedly a Strong competitors. Someone said, "In the one-kilometer radius of Shenzhen Nanshan District, there are more than 100 smart speaker manufacturers."

At least, Jingdong has given lessons to the industry. In China, Jingdong and HKUST’s X-Fly took the lead in arranging and citing interface reports. According to a person in charge of Linglong Technology's voice solution service provider company, inside of Jingdong, “Liu Qiangdong’s This matter is very important." Jingdong invested 45 million yuan in Linglong Technology, which accounted for 45% of the shares. According to public statistics, the cumulative sales volume of Lou speaker and its cooperating products has exceeded one million units this year. But more than one smart speaker practitioner admitted to the top floor view that there is water in this figure. "It is possible that hundreds of thousands of units will not come." To know that Jingdong can firmly control the first traffic entrance in the field of home appliances 3C, then other small players can imagine.

What is the essence of smart speaker competition?

In discussing the essence of smart speaker competition, we must return to the previous question. What is the logic behind the commonalities of giants?

First of all, what platform-based companies want to do is undoubtedly a platform attribute. At present, it seems that the big players of smart speakers are drawing public opinion towards the entrance of smart homes. From this perspective, the real logic of giants lies in early layout and completion. For data harvesting, for voice human-computer interaction and smart home entrance, data samples are the key to future core competition, and large enough samples are needed to provide deep learning ground for voice interaction.

Secondly, through the collection of data through such a pilot product, and thus tapping into the deepening scenes of smart homes, as mentioned above, these head players have a commonality in the cloud computing business, and the future Internet of things industry Must be based on big data and cloud computing. So looking at both of them, the battle for smart speakers is in fact a battle for the giants' AI, and the struggle for entry into the smart home is just a more ambitious goal.

In general, smart speakers are undoubtedly ushering in a new window, but for most players, their purpose is only to occupy a key node in the key, just catch up with the hot investment behavior, and the so-called smart home entrance, smart Home control still does not jump out of the category of smart routers and smart cameras, but it just finds an excuse to convince himself of his blind layout.

The original title giants have bet smart speakers: to seize the smart home entrance most people just met with a lively illusion Internet +